At a press conference on 3 December, the subsecretary for Planning and Evaluation of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), Otto Granados Roldán, said that a group of teachers had registered for the performance evaluation toward the end of disrupting it. Some 70 teachers who registered sabotaged the network of 2,800 computers contained in the Imperial World of Acapulco. Nonetheless, 500 teachers continued completing their exam. The SEP in Guerrero indicated that it would prosecute the teachers who disabled the network, and that they would be sanctioned.

The day before the evaluation, some 3,000 teachers from different institutions and educational levels were transferred to the Acapulco port and put up in luxury hotels, such as the Princess, Pierre Marqués, and the Imperial World Resort, property of the Autofin group, which is owned by the capitalist Juan Antonio Hernández. The next day, to enter the World Imperial Forum, teachers passed through police checkpoints featuring anti-riot equipment and high metal bars. Some 6,000 federal police were sent to Acapulco to protect the World Imperial Forum, where the evaluation was held. During the test, many were bothered by the lack of computers and the behavior and presence of the police. Many teachers attempted to leave, but the police forced them to say. When the governor Héctor Astudillo arrived later to the Imperial World Forum, personnel from the SEP offered money to teachers so that they would continue taking the exam.

Members of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (CECOP) protested on 17 June at the offices of the Judiciary in Acapulco, where they demanded that authorities from the three levels of government immediately release their leader Marco Antonio Suástegui, alleging his innocence, with this being the reason they will not rest until he is free. Marco Antonio Suástegui, who has been imprisoned for a year, founded the Communal Police in the Common Lands of Cacahuatepec, and for years he opposed the La Parota hydroelectric dam project. Upon the completion of a year since the arrest of the CECOP leader, the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights urged the Superior Tribunal for State Justice, based in Acapulco, to resolve the three appeals that have been presented against the prison sentence. The organization denounced that the Tribunal “has delayed its decisions on the appeals for no reason, thus prolonging the process.” It also said that the motions against imprisonment demonstrated violations to due process, including the fact that, at the time that Suastégui declared himself, he was not allowed to have an attorney present.

The Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú Tum, recipient of the Nobel Peace Price, visited Mexico from 26 to 30 May on the invitation of the National Electoral Institute, which paid $10,000 to the Rigoberta Menchú Foundatjon for the Guatemalan indigenous woman to be present to promote voting and liberal democracy. The INE confirmed that it spent said amount ($153,157 MX) after Menchú conceded in an interview that she had received $10,000 “as well as taxes.” The INE social communication coordinator reported that the amount had been transferred because “at the very hour a benefactor intervened,” explaining that, to pay for Rigoberta’s visit, the INE had taken these resources as a sort of payment for electoral training. The annual rate was said to be unknown.

In the first place, Menchú Tum was accredited as a foreigner by the INE council president Lorenzo Córdova Vianello, who had recently provoked a scandal after mocking an indigenous leader during a telephone conversation. This scandal led different organizations from Oaxaca to publish a communique demanding “the immediate resignation of C. LORENZO CÓRDOVA VIANELLO, who up to now has ostentatiously held the office of President of the [INE], due to his discriminatory and backward attitude toward indigenous people. His insults offend the dignity of the indigenous peoples of Mexico.”

Subsequently, Rigoberta Menchú participed in an event in Acapulco, Guerrero, to promote the vote, when a Guerrero youth interrupted the event to say that many different comunities such as San Luis Acatlán, her Nahua community of origin, are subjected to violence. She added, “Ms. Rigoberta Menchú, our indignation and rage cannot end, and I know you understand. One other thing: we cannot continue to ask for a minute of silence for the disappeared, because to request just a minute for each murder and each disappearance in the country or our own state, we would be remain silent eternally.” This intervention was met with great applause.

On 12 March, the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights denounced in a bulletin that, in an extemporaneous way, the penal director for Guerrero State has submitted a motion to review the motion granted to Marco Antonio Suástegui, spokesperson for the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (CECOP), that would have allowed him to be transferred to a jail within the state. Tlachinollan indicates that this “denotes the clear lack of political will and the arbitrary use of the juridical system on the part of the state government of Guerrero, toward the sole end of continuing with the criminalization of human-rights defenders.”

On 14 March, some 800 people marched in Acapulco in solidarity with CECOP, which had organized a mobilization to demand the release of Suástegui Muñoz, who has been imprisoned since 17 June 2014 in the federal prison in Tepic, Nayarit, and of María de la Cruz Dorantes, who has been imprisoned in Acapulco since 6 October 2014. Leaders of Cecop denounced that Rogelio Ortega Martínez, the interim governor, has not observed his commitment to intervening to facilitate the release of Suástegui Muñoz, something which he promised to do on 3 March upon signing a pact of reconciliation in Salsipuedes with leaders of CECOP and relatives of the communard in question. CECOP warned that, as long as Suástegui Muñoz is not released, political candidates and State functionaries will not be allowed entry to Cacahuatepec.

On 25 February, the Guerrero state government confirmed the death of the teacher Claudio Castillo Peña due to cranial trauma, following the conflict between the Federal Police and members of the State Coordination of Educational Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) the day prior in Acapulco. Raúl Miliani Sabido, the Secretary for Civil Protection in the state, said in an interview that “unfortunately we do have the confirmation” of Castillo’s death, being 65 years of age. Castillo Peña belonged to the teachers’ movement of the retired and usually was one of the speakers at the actions organized by the teachers in resistance. Due to his state of health, the teacher used crutches, and witnesses observe that he could not run to escape the police displacement operation. The Attorney General of Guerrero State announced on 26 February that the appropriate investigations had begun to investigate and establish the legal responsibilities of the civilian courts.

Testimony from female members of CETEG who had been at the front of the contingent when it was attacked by the Federal Police confirms the sexual abuse of a teacher who has been hospitalized in Cuernavaca, Morelos. In a communique she relates that during the chase, the police caught up with her “and began to beat me, then I fell. So they took me to a remote place where they raped me multiple times, hurt me, and caused me to lose consciousness due to so much pain.”

In a press-conference on 29 January, the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights reported that on 26 January, the third judge of the Acapulco district concluded that the penal authorities had no justification for the reasons provided for the transfer of Antonio Suástegui Muñoz, spokesperson of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to La Parota Dam (CECOP), to a maximum-security prison in Tepic, Nayarit. As such, the judge in question ordered Muñoz’s return to the Unión jail in the Isidoro de Montes de Oca municipality, Guerrero State.

It should be recalled that, on 17 June 2014, the CECOP spokesperson was arrested by ministerial police and transferred to Tepic, Nayarit, on the orders of the Guerrero State Secretary for Public Security.

Tlachinollan had solicited a motion in the case “considering that there is a systematic pattern in the employment of maximum-security prisons to punish and silence social activists and communal defenders who protect the exercise of their rights.” The Center denounced that “the decision of the State Government implied an act that sought to repress and punish Marco Antonio Suástegui Muñoz due to his opposition to the construction of the La Parota hydroelectric dam and for defending his land.”

March in San Cristóbal de las Casas by the National Brigade for the disappeared of Ayotzinapa @ SIPAZ

On 12 November, in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, relatives of the disappeared students and the student committee reported on the activities of the National Brigade regarding the presentation with life of the 43 disappeared normalist students from Ayotzinapa.

The brigade was organized into three branches, one towards the north (passing through the states of Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas, Jalisco, and Michoacán); one toward the south (visiting the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Morelos, and Tlaxcala), and another state brigade in Guerrero, which visited the municipalities of Tlapa, San Luis Acatlán, Ayutla, Tecoanapa, Zihuatanejo, Atoyac, and Acapulco. The three caravans met in Mexico City on 20 November to conclude their work with a mass-march and rally in the Zócalo. The objective of the Brigade was to collect direct information regarding the acts of 26 and 27 September, the investigative process, and the search for the 43 disappeared students, beyond making proposals for the elaboration of a program for struggle and action that would transform the causes led to the events seen in Iguala.

The “Daniel Solís Gallardo” Brigade arrived to Chiapas on 14 November, being named for one of the normalist students who was killed on 26 September, and it led a march through the streets of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, to the applause of onlookers. “Alive they took them; alive we want them,” “Ayotzinapa, hold on; Chiapas is rising” together with other slogans were heard until the march reached the Cathedral Plaza.

At the rally, two women spoke, being the mothers of two of the disappeared. They said that they no longer have fear, and that they are prepared to give their lives to find their sons, because though the government says they are dead, they believe in their hearts that they are still alive.

On 15 November, the members of the Brigade visited the Zapatista caracol of Oventik, where they met with the high command of the Revolutionary Clandestine Indigenous Committee of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), and the EZLN expressed its sympathy for the pain, rage, and powerlessness of the parents who still have yet to find their sons.

The activities in San Cristóbal de Las Casas concluded with a press-conference during which Brigade members noted that the EZLN had suggested that they “visit those who like us have suffered forcible disappearances or extrajudicial executions–who are not few in number in this country–because it is only they who will understand us and accompany us in our pain and struggle. It is they with whom we can articulate a movement, a larger and more powerful nucleus with all the social organizations that would like to join,” following their return through Oaxaca.